“I don’t want him, Bertie, as I shall go right to my place from trapping, and you will want Frank early in the spring. I have nothing to carry but a rifle; my traps are all there. I shall go afoot or in one of the wagons that haul goods over the mountains, and in the spring I can buy a horse there or a mule for ten dollars, and sell him this side of the mountains for seventy-five, perhaps a hundred.”
The night before he started, Miss Conly said to him,—
“You will be at work on the place before we meet again, I want you to promise me one thing, and that is that you will not tear down the camp, for I intend to live in it.”
“That is the very first thing I intended to do.”
“I thought as much; well, don’t you do it, I don’t want you should.”
“But you wouldn’t think of moving into such a place as that, and I could not consent that you should.”
“Why not? Did not Mrs. Chadwick live there four years with a sick husband and two little children? I hope I can do what any other woman has done.”
“I don’t doubt that, but there is no necessity. I intend in the spring to get Mr. Prescott’s oxen and haul some of the trees he will cut this fall to the spot, hew them, and put up a comfortable timber house.”
“You will have work enough to do without that. It is a great expense to begin; we must lessen it all we can. It will be but little work to repair that camp, and when we are on the spot and you have cattle of your own, and your tools are all there, you can do it in the intervals of other work, and can do it much more to your mind.”
“That is all true, Emily, but——”